Wild Food Foraging In Semi-Urban Area

Yes! Wild food still exists, even in today’s urbanized areas. There is a piece of land near where I live that is semi wild, there is a dirt road and some houses nearby but there is also a lot of forest and small animals. In fact sometimes I will be quietly sitting meditating when all of a sudden a little buck will come bounding past and scare me half to death! One day I was walking and I saw these small red berries. Now I will advise you to never eat food you don’t know but I have always been a bit stupid when it comes to risk taking and I took a berry and ate it. As you can see, I am still alive and the berry was delicious! Since then, I eat a few berries whenever I walk past that area. I will try to find out the name of this plant and update the article when I do.

Wild food foraging is immensely satisfying. There is something about finding little edible treats in nature that is so much fun. And of course it is organic too! Not only organic, but the plant’s genetic material is superb as it has been self-propagating for who knows how long. Many of our current food plants can’t boast that same feat – try growing your store bought tomato seeds past 2 or 3 generations and you will see what I mean.

I plan on creating an organic seed bank and taking a percentage and sowing it in the wild. My aim is to try and increase the amount of “wild food” in areas like these and see how these plants fare. If the experiment goes well, more “food forests” can be created, growing on their own as Nature intended. I think that destitute and homeless people should at least be able to forage for food. Living off Nature is essential to feeling safe and secure in this world when you have absolutely nothing to call your own.

Lara Whybrow is the founder and website developer/content writer at Ethical Suppliers. She loves growing all manner of things, particularly rare plants or edibles and used to keep a small flock of free range chickens. She is passionate about getting more people to grow organic food for themselves and selling the excess or giving it to those less fortunate.